Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update June 2001

Theme – Mere Seeing & Listening Silence

We announce beginning this month the Hermitage Harbor Room, the studio apartment above the Bookshop & Bakery, will be available for use by the extended Meetingbrook community for times of quiet, retreat, and soul-friend conversation. The Hermitage Harbor Room offers a place apart for meditation, contemplation, and engaged practice. Ask about use and overnight stays.

We are saddened by the death of Barbara Luszczki at the Knox County Jail on the 1^st of June. We knew her about 15 years after tutoring her 3-4 years in her home for alternative school diploma.

Those three jewels of our common suffering, our common life! And we will be fine, all of us -- Barbara, her sons, her friends, her shock of rust-yellow hair. We turn from despair with time & care. Nothing perishes, not really, at least not without our letting it go to perish. She leaves us this. She leaves us our lives. She leaves us as we are, gathered here. We 'll think twice before letting her go from our memories. We'll think twice before trying to follow her the way she went off from us. And in our pausing ponder, we'll have begun our practice. The practice of looking. Looking long. Looking deep. Looking love. Looking weep. Seeing all that passes   in our sight. Seeing “All will be well.” Just like this, in passing & staying behind -- All will be well. Reading that Buddhist line on Tuesday night:           Leaving us nowhere           completely with           what is. So here we are!  Alone with each other! And when we speak of Barbara, we pray, and say: All will be well! This is what we long for… This is what we tell.                       (from poem Tutoring Each OtherCompletely With What Is -- wfh, 6June01

We welcome late spring sweetness willing to let go into summer. Posts set, design inked, wood delivered, work of Jim R with Paul S’s guidance, hermitage cabin under raised eye of Bald mtn. 

We’ll have our 2^nd conversation in prison with the fond realization of the gift the 1^st gave.

We’ll have the 2^nd Saturday morning monthly retreat knowing the solid beginning of the 1^st.

We’ll listen gratefully to bells under cedar tree and bell on meditation room altar each morning when we sit, each Sunday evening when we practice. The simplicity of mere seeing & listening silence reveals that of God and Nature and True Self.

We look to practice Spirit, Trinity, and Body of Christ. We listen to practice everydayness, beginner’s mind, and Bodhisattva vow.

May 2001 Update
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